Carroll Monday press conference notes: Running game “just didn’t get it done the way we like”

Pete Carroll’s weekly Monday press conference has concluded, a session that serves mostly as a review of the previous day’s game.

Here are some highlights:

— In terms of personnel, Carroll said the only injury suffered Sunday was a hamstring injury, that Carroll called “a minor strain” of backup strong safety Jeron Johnson. Carroll said “we’ll have to figure out later in the week” if he will be available this week.

— As for whether there were other injuries, he said: “We’ll wait until Wednesday to see where we are on that stuff. Some guys, like I said yesterday, a couple guys banged up but no serious inuries yet that we know of.”

— As for Brandon Browner, who missed the game with a hamstring injury, Carroll said: “He wasn’t ready to go. He ran hard in pre-game but not full speed. We want to make sure we get him back to full speed. … he’s going to run again. He ran today he’ll run tomorrow and Wednesday, we’ll see how he does and try to get him for Thursday’s practice.”

— Cliff Avril also gave it a go in pre-game Sunday and Carroll said there is “a good possibility (he can play against the 49ers) if he makes it through the week. He practiced well enough last week. He was very close to playing Sunday, so we are planning on him being part of it this week unless he has some kind of setback. That would be a nice little boost to get him back in the game.”

— As for Chris Clemons, Carroll said: “He’s going to practice. He’s going to take reps this week. It was kind of a modified week last week. He’ll take reps Wednesday and we’ll see how he does. We need to just get him through the practice routine and see if he can handle it which we think he can. He looks great, but he hasn’t done that yet, working against other guys and pushing and shoving and all that. (He’ll go) in a limited fasion and take it one day at a time and see how he progresses.”

— As for some standouts Sunday, Carroll mentioned some of the obvious players such as Doug Baldwin and Jermaine Kearse and Russell Wilson. He also mentioned the defensive line, and particularly newcomers O’Brien Schofield, Tony McDaniel and Michael Bennett. “I really liked Tony McDaniel. He was physical, got his hands up in the face of the quarterback a couple times. He didn’t get any sacks but he was forceful at the line of scrimmage, defeated some good blocks in double-team situations. He looks like he could really help us, so fired up about that. I thought Michael Bennett showed too. We moved him around a lot — Michael played really hard and I made note in the team meeting about Obie and Tony and Mike all looking like they fit in with our guys and the style of play that we like, so real fired up about that.”

— As for concerns, two that stood out were penalties and the run game:

— On penalties, Carroll said: “There are a couple of things that are real easy to clean up and then a couple of them, the flinches at the line of scrimmage, hate to have those. There are two of those. The penalty on Michael Bennett, that’s a real questionable one but he was in the head area and you are asking for trouble so have to stay below that. … a coupe holds could go one way or the other, so we need to clean that up.”

— On the running game, Carroll said today it was also a matter of scheme as well as not getting enough push up front. He said the running backs were fine but simply had nowhere to go most of the time. “We didn’t run the ball as well, and in our program that’s a huge focus, so we were disappointed in that and we plan to go right back to business and get it done this week. We can’t go like that, we are not going to play football that way, so we will see if we can do something about it this week against a tremendous defense.”

— Asked what needed to improve, he said: “Just getting it done. We just didn’t get it done the way we like it and I contributed to that, so I’ve got to make sure I help out and do the right things to help us so we get on track with what is really important to us. We didn’t zero in early on to make the adjustments we needed to make. It just took us a while.”

Here’s video of the first few minutes of Carroll’s press conference today: